Crohn’s Disease – Overview

Transcript

Crohn’s disease is an inflammatory bowel disease. Essentially it’s an autoimmune disorder. We don’t know exactly all the details of why people get Crohn’s disease, but we’ve come a long way over the last decade or two. Essentially Crohn’s disease can affect anywhere from the mouth all the way down to the anus. So people can have Crohn’s disease of the small intestine. That’s about, I would say about 80% of people have CroHn’s disease that is limited to their small intestine. There’s about 50% of people who have Crohn’s disease that is just in their colon. Okay. And there are minority of Crohn’s disease patients that it only affects the upper digestive tract so the stomach or the upper intestines. There are a number of symptoms that people can have with Crohn’s disease. It can start out as something as simple as just fatigue or a little bit of anemia. Weight loss can be the only symptom. And then there are more substantial symptoms such as abdominal pain. One can have nausea, vomiting, there’s a blockage. Diarrhea is a very common symptom in patients with Crohn’s disease. And occasionally they also get bleeding. Rectal bleeding. So those are some of the main symptoms that patients with Crohn’s disease can experience.